Our team went to the finals this weekend with team 78, Air Strike, at the Granite State Regional. They could consistently lift in under 15 seconds. The lift is an arm that deploys and grabs the vertical pole. A powered wheel then rotates and 'climbs' up the pole. I believe there is some video already around on CD showing it.

From watching on webcasts on Friday and watching the Kettering district regional live, I have come up with a good list of lifters that were consistant, yet quick.

78- I do agree with the previous post, they have a very effective hanger and it's easy to pull off.

525- watching the KC regional was exciting, but when these guys played you waited for the last 20 secs to come. They sit right on the bump and take hold on the top bar, and there off. Most times to make the full lift I took about 10-12 secs. The only problem is they have to get on the bump, I forsee teams trying to push them off or try to block the bump in the future.

2337- The enginerds always have something out of the box on there robot, since there rookie year. This year they have the coolest looking chin-up robot I've seen. They have a huge system that sits on top of the base and it kicks up after they set-up under the bar. It's vey effective, as if only of the two hooks grabs hold it stills gets two points for there alliance. I believe in the 8 matches I watched them play on Saturday, they hung for 2 points 7 times.

27/33-My favorite two hangers are very similar and twice they hung in the same match making it very fun to watch. The easiest way to describe these lifters is to say that, they are close to the likes of what 217/148 had. Both lighting quick and sometimes both lifted up, in under 10 secs. Yet the bees (33) took it one step further by having message written on the bottom of the robot for the crowd to see after they hung themselves. Whether it being "Bee happy!" or "Finals baby!" both these robots have almost perfected the art and probably will continue to do it every match.

FLR had so many good ones but I think the one that really stood out were 1551 (check out the video from YNN who could hang consistently and fast every match and that ability drove them to the top seed. Team 229 can hang in few seconds. Rookie team 3157 , 1559, 1241 and 1507 were also tremendous hangers.
There were probably a dozen robots at FLR that could hang. We had several matches with multiple robots hanging. As many as three in some matches.
We manage to hang in the last match for the first time right at the end of the match but unfortunate so did 1551 (they would have won anyways even if they didn't make it up).

1625's lifter was one of my favorites. A few more seconds and they would have tied match 3, I bet. The actual lifting motion is short, getting in place with defense isn't. (Defense before they touch the tower, of course).

148 and 217 _had_ good systems.

2062, 2079 seem pretty neat.

I want to scrap my team's system for a simpler to control system due to stability issues in favor of tunneling...

27/33-My favorite two hangers are very similar and twice they hung in the same match making it very fun to watch. The easiest way to describe these lifters is to say that, they are close to the likes of what 217/148 had. Both lighting quick and sometimes both lifted up, in under 10 secs. Yet the bees (33) took it one step further by having message written on the bottom of the robot for the crowd to see after they hung themselves. Whether it being "Bee happy!" or "Finals baby!" both these robots have almost perfected the art and probably will continue to do it every match.

I will echo that. I was working on autonomous and the people watching the webcast called over to me and said that I had to check out 27 hanging. I was amazed. It was a great example of how quickly elevation could be accomplished. I stuck around a little longer and watched 33 do something very similar (they were hanging with about 12 seconds left in the match at one point!). The thing that was most impressive was the speed at which both teams went from driving around to hanging. They took the complexity out of lining up and were up in no time. Great job to both 27/33. I can't wait to get a close look at both in Atlanta.

2337- The enginerds always have something out of the box on there robot, since there rookie year. This year they have the coolest looking chin-up robot I've seen. They have a huge system that sits on top of the base and it kicks up after they set-up under the bar. It's vey effective, as if only of the two hooks grabs hold it stills gets two points for there alliance. I believe in the 8 matches I watched them play on Saturday, they hung for 2 points 7 times.

Just a heads up on why it is so large, that thing is designed so that anyone that could normally hang (off the top bar) can hang off of it instead. The robot was designed to facilitate a double suspension.

And, I would like it noted, the upper structure is most definitely inside the box (except in the last 20 seconds). We don't want no penalties!

The best lifter at The New Jersey Regional was 25 without a doubt. Their mechanism was both unique and fast, but I won't go into too much detail here. I believed it was dubbed "The Strong Man Hang" by the announcer at NJ...

Just a heads up on why it is so large, that thing is designed so that anyone that could normally hang (off the top bar) can hang off of it instead. The robot was designed to facilitate a double suspension.

And, I would like it noted, the upper structure is most definitely inside the box (except in the last 20 seconds). We don't want no penalties!

Lol... What I meant by outside the box was, something completely different than most... Kinda like the boot idea from 2008..

There is something else about 2337. When they lock on there is this sound. It just sounds-- strong. I was in the pits and just knew it was them. I don't remember, and maybe someone from 2337 could answer this, could a team like 27/33 lock onto you and then you lift or is your structure made out of square tubing?

When we go to lock on to the tower we have two pins that are pulled and extend our supports that touch the vertical supports of the tower, that is the first sound you hear. Then our two hooks slam on to the horizontal support and then falls into place. At that point any one that can lift off the horizontal bars of the tower can begin hooking on to us at the same time we lift.

Our structure is made out of 1.5" diameter tube with 0.083" wall thickness, we currently have vertical pole and have talk about having vertical lifter on us. Our only concern is the torque that would be applied to our vertical supports and whether or not it could handle it. With a 24" arm and a 150 lb robot the torque we would see on our vertical supports would be some where around 3600 in*lbs. We are going to test that in a controlled environment before trying it on the field.

I will try to do my best to get some action shot and maybe even some videos posted some time this week.